First, there was Seinfeld, everyone’s favourite show about nothing, mining the neurotic self-involvement of four scheming Manhattanites for primetime laughs. Then, there was @SeinfeldToday, a Twitter parody imagining what Seinfeld would be like if it were still on the air, loaded with easy jokes. Stuff like:

Fake pictures on Craigslist make Elaine's apartment hunt insane. Kramer claims to be the inspiration for all three Hangover films.

This joke is “funny” because Craigslist didn’t exist for most of Seinfeld’s original run, but does now. Also the Kramer joke nods to the “Peterman Reality Tour” plotline, while also referencing the Hangover series of films, which you have heard of. So then, thanks to the Twitterverse’s tendency to treat parody as some cannibalizing game of one-upmanship (see: the numerous Black Stewie or garbage Shrek accounts), there emerged @Seinfeld2000, an actually funny twitter account that simultaneously parodied Seinfeld and the @ModernSeinfeld account. Less “George uses an iPhone 5” and more stuff like:

Jary gaze wistfuly at his own reflectien in the miror
JARY: Whats the deal … with me?
He search his sad eyes for an answer but find none

The jokes struck a chord with the perpetually over-it, post-hipster set (or, you know, just people who like jokes). @Seinfeld2000 eventually began to enjoy a certain measure of subcultural infamy, boosted by the release of an e-book (published online by Gawker) and semi-surreal, stream-of-consciousness writing for VICE. He operated anonymously, without any attempts to leverage the Twitter account into opportunities for his “real” self. Until now.

This weekend, The New York Times revealed that @Seinfeld2000 is real. And better: he’s Torontonian.

In an article titled “A Show About Nothing Begets Something You Can Play Online,” the Times—probably the only daily paper that can get away with using “begets” in a headline—revealed @Seinfeld2000 as Jason Richards, a 31 year-old TV producer from Toronto. The Times article focuses a bit on Richards’ parody-of-a-parody, and the “deranged, occasionally disturbing presence of his Twitter creation ,” but is mostly given over to Richards’ new project—an online game called The Junior Mint.

Created (or, per @Seinfeld2000 syntax, “imagened”) with high-minded New Zealand game developer Pippin Barr, The Junior Mint plays like a self-parody of web games, with the player attempting to ricochet a rebounding candy into the open cavity of a patient on an operating table, in an ode to the classic Seinfeld episode. Barr describes the game to the Times as a “second/third order parody.” It’s parody all the way down, gang.

But the real takeaway here: we can count one of the funniest/weirdest Internet things in recent memory as one of our own. Let’s exploit this opportunity to post some of the best @Seinfeld2000 tweets.